UIA Education Commission - A Curriculum for Resilience: Educating the Next Generation of Architects
Speakers
Magda Mostafa, co-chair, UIA Education Commission
Marilys Nepomechie, co-chair, UIA Education Commission
Jana Revedin, Professor of architecture and urban planning, École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, UNESCO delegate to UIA Education Commission
CES: 1.25 LU/ HSW for AIA Members
Event Description
The UIA Education Commission serves as an international think tank for architectural education policy and practice, proposing guidelines that facilitate access to excellence and relevance in professional education. The UNESCO-UIA Validation Council works to set an international standard for excellence in architecture education, ensuring that young architects are prepared to meet the environmental, social, and cultural challenges of an increasingly globalized profession, and facilitating the portability of academic credentials worldwide.
With representation from across the five UIA regions, the Education Commission and UNESCO-UIA Validation Council are uniquely positioned to reflect the breadth and diversity of its perspectives and the regional specificity of its approaches to achieving sustainability and resilience in the built environment. In this session, we will discuss global pedagogical trends and regional innovations focused on the challenges posed by climate change and sustainability.
Speaker Bios
Magda Mostafa, co-chair, UIA Education Commission
Magda Mostafa is currently the Co-Director of the UNESCO-UIA Education Commission and Co-Reporter of its Validation Council as well as an Associate Professor of Design at the American University in Cairo.
Through her Cairo-based practice, Progressive Architects she specializes in autism inclusive design and is the author of the Autism ASPECTSS™ design guidelines, the world’s first research-based design framework for autism worldwide. ASPECTSS™ has been presented at the United Nations as a framework for international autism design policy, as well as showcased in lectures and keynotes at Harvard’s GSD, the National Autistic Society in the UK, Ireland’s AsIAM and the World Autism Organization. It was awarded the UIA International Research Award in 2014 and was the subject if her well-received TedxTalk in 2015. Through various consultancies ASPECTSS™ has been used to design projects spanning five continents and ranging in scale from interior classroom retrofits to urban-scale neighbourhoods in Europe, the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Ireland and the UAE. Information about her work can be found at http://www.autism.archi
She has recently joined the New York-based think-tank and inclusive practice MIXDesign as a co-director of their MIX Neurodiverse Studio and as part of their team as an autism expert (https://www.mixdesign.online), where she brings the lens of autism and neurodiversity to their intersectional practices.
Her other field of research looks at another form of marginalization through the study of informal settlements, and in 2015 she published the Juxtopolis© Pedagogy, a studio-based research/design methodology. The Juxtopolis© Pedagogy's resultant work has been presented and exhibited worldwide, including at Columbia University's GSAPP; Durban, South Africa; the 2016 and 2018 Venice Biennales as well as a recent publication titled “The Informal City and the Future of our Cities: Towards a Manifesto” which outlines the product of her 2017 RIBA Masterclass on the subject. She is co-author of the book "Learning from Cairo" and her Juxtopolis Pedagogy was featured in Columbia University's book series on Architecture and the City "The Arab City: Architecture and Representation".
Marilys Nepomechie, co-chair, UIA Education Commission
Marilys Nepomechie, FAIA, DPACSA, is an Architect, Professor of Architecture, and Associate Dean at the Florida International University College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts. Her creative work and scholarship focus on the environmental, cultural and social contexts of design. It includes a broad range of proposals for resilient, affordable infrastructure and housing, many conducted through collaborative community-based design processes. Included in the archives of the U.S. National Building Museum, the work of her practice has been honored with over 40 professional and academic awards; national and international exhibition; and wide publication.
The National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Conference of Mayors, and International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam; as well as the Andrew W. Mellon, and The Graham, CINTAS and American Architecture Foundations have all funded her research, creative and curatorial work. Author, most recently, of the AIA Guide to Miami | Building Paradise: An Architectural Guide to the Magic City, Nepomechie has also co-curated national and international exhibitions including Miami | La Habana: Magic City | Novia del Mar; Miami 2100: Envisioning a Resilient Second Century; The Radical HIVE: Social Housing and Urbanism in Latin America; and La Habana Moderna: 1902-1959.
Nepomechie currently serves the International Union of Architects [UIA] as Co-Director of the Education Commission and as Co-Reporter of the UNESCO-UIA Validation Council. In 2018 she was elected to the National Architectural Accreditation Board [NAAB], and currently serves as President of its Board of Directors. Elected 2016 National President of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture [ACSA], Nepomechie has been advanced to the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors, and to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects [AIA].
Jana Revedin, Professor of architecture and urban planning, École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, UNESCO delegate to UIA Education Commission
Born in Constance (Germany), Jana Revedin is an architect, theorist and writer. She graduated from the Politecnico di Milano and is a doctor of architecture and urban planning at IUAV University in Venice, qualified to direct research. A full professor of architecture and urban planning at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris, she is a member of the LAURE research laboratory “Environment, City, Society” (CNRS) and the UNESCO delegate to the Education and Research Commission of the UIA.
Between 2005 and 2012 she directed the European student competition for sustainable architecture gau:di, exhibiting the winning projects at the Venice Biennales in 2008, 2010 and 2012. In 2006 she created the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, giving birth to a global collective (70 worldwide laureates from 2007 to 2021) of scientific and professional exchange and experimentation.
Her theory of “radicant design” proposes the collective transformation of the contemporary city on the basis of an “open-work” morphology of participative experimental processes. The author of reference works on sustainable architecture and cities and their ethical and sociopolitical rootedness, starting with the German reform movement of the Bauhaus, she won the AESOP Prize for Teaching Excellence (2013) and the global prize of the Urban Revitalization of Mass Housing competition of UN Habitat (2014). Appointed a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 2014 she has also been honoured by the French Academy of Architecture with the Medal for the Direction of Doctoral Thesis of Excellence (2016) and the Prospective Medal (2017). In 2022 she will direct the International Exhibition of the Architecture Biennale of Versailles, France.
